r/hubble

The galaxy's dark "brim" is ring of dust and cold gas encircling a vast ball of stars.

Dark Energy Camera spies the faint glowing features of Messier 104, known as the Sombrero Galaxy

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Messier 104, nicknamed the Sombrero Galaxy, is a popular target for amateur observing and astronomical research. Its recognizable extended halo, as well as a faint stellar stream, are captured in exquisite detail in this image from the Department of Energy-fabricated Dark Energy Camera, mounted on the U.S. National Science Foundation Víctor M. Blanco 4-meter Telescope at Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile, a Program of NSF NOIRLab.

The Sombrero galaxy (Messier 104) is a galactic masterpiece that captivates scientists and astronomy enthusiasts alike. Its intricate system of globular star clusters lends insight into stellar populations, and astronomers are intrigued by the supermassive black hole at its center. Its distinctive visual features and relative brightness make it a favorite among amateur astronomers. The fascinating story of its discovery, involving three esteemed astronomers, has earned it a spot on one of the most important lists of deep sky objects. Today, it stands as one of the most iconic galaxies in the night sky.

Messier 104 resides approximately 30 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Virgo (see finder chart). Spanning an impressive 50,000 light-years across, it is among the largest objects of the Virgo Galaxy Cluster. Despite its grandeur, it appears relatively dim in the night sky — just 

https://noirlab.edu/public/news/noirlab2612/

Rubin's Ocean of Stars

Dive in and explore this image peering through our home galaxy, the Milky Way. At first glance, it’s a dense scatter of light, like a glittering sea. Look closer, and the stars begin to stand out individually — notice their range of colors and brightnesses. Rubin captures stars in clear detail, revealing faint light in crowded stellar regions. This view is close to the Milky Way’s plane, the crowded disk of the galaxy.

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In this image, millions of multi-colored stars appear against a backdrop of galaxies of all shapes and sizes. The brightest stars punctuate the scene in dazzling blue, yellow, red, and white. Look very closely, and you may spot a few ghostly clouds of Galactic gas and dust muting the distant light.

We’re familiar with stars as points of light in the night sky, but they have even more to offer when we take a closer look. Stars are some of the building blocks of a galaxy, and they carry information about the galaxy’s past. Their colors and brightness tell us about their temperature, size, and age: bluer stars are usually hotter, more massive, and younger, while redder stars tend to be cooler, less massive, and older. By studying stars across the Milky Way, scientists can piece together when different parts of our galaxy formed and how it has evolved over time.

Although this image is static, it represents a much more active Universe. Many of these stars change in brightness or shift slightly in position over time. Over Rubin’s 10-year survey, scientists will watch this scene come to life, tracking changes that occur on timescales from days to years.

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https://rubinobservatory.org/gallery/image-releases/ocean-of-stars

https://bsky.app/profile/vrubinobs.bsky.social/post/3mpje7yrmem2t

Created with data from the WFC3.

April 22, 2004

Resembling a diamond-encrusted bracelet, a ring of brilliant blue star clusters wraps around the yellowish nucleus of what was once a normal spiral galaxy in this new image from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope (HST). This image is being released to commemorate the 14th anniversary of Hubble's launch on April 24, 1990 and its deployment from the space shuttle Discovery on April 25, 1990.

The sparkling blue ring is 150,000 light-years in diameter, making it larger than our entire home galaxy, the Milky Way. The galaxy, cataloged as AM 0644-741, is a member of the class of so-called "ring galaxies." It lies 300 million light-years away in the direction of the southern constellation Volans.

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Ring galaxies are an especially striking example of how collisions between galaxies can dramatically change their structure, while also triggering the formation of new stars. They arise from a particular type of collision, in which one galaxy (the "intruder") plunges directly through the disk of another one (the "target"). In the case of AM 0644-741, the galaxy that pierced through the ring galaxy is out of the image but visible in larger-field images. The soft spiral galaxy that is visible to the left of the ring galaxy in the image is a coincidental background galaxy that is not interacting with the ring.

The resulting gravitational shock imparted due to the collision drastically changes the orbits of stars and gas in the target galaxy's disk, causing them to rush outward, somewhat like ripples in a pond after a large rock has been thrown in. As the ring plows outward into its surroundings, gas clouds collide and are compressed. The clouds can then contract under their own gravity, collapse, and form an abundance of new stars.

The rampant star formation explains why the ring is so blue: It is continuously forming massive, young, hot stars, which are blue in color. Another sign of robust star formation is the pink regions along the ring. These are rarefied clouds of glowing hydrogen gas, fluorescing because of the strong ultraviolet light from the newly formed massive stars.

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Anyone who lives on planets embedded in the ring would be treated to a view of a brilliant band of blue stars arching across the heavens. The view would be relatively short-lived because theoretical studies indicate that the blue ring will not continue to expand forever. After about 300 million years, it will reach a maximum radius, and then begin to disintegrate.

The Hubble Heritage Team used the Hubble Advanced Camera for Surveys to take this image in January 2004. The team used a combination of four separate filters that isolate blue, green, red, and near-infrared light to create the color image.

The Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc. (AURA), for NASA, under contract with the Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD. The Hubble Space Telescope is a project of international cooperation between NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA).

• Credit NASA, ESA, and The Hubble Heritage Team (AURA/STScI); Acknowledgment: J. Higdon (Cornell U.) and I. Jordan (STScI)

https://science.nasa.gov/asset/hubble/blue-stars-ring-nucleus-of-galaxy-am-0644-741/

Create with data from the WFC3.

I am working on a new stretch function (Midtones Transfer Function). I think it is working out well.

This image was created with data from the WFC3.

This is a fun picture. The galaxy in the foreground is pretty cool due to the long tail, but I am also fascinated with the menagerie of galaxies in the background. It is hard to see them all in a small image, but at full size they are spectacular.

This image was created with data from the ACS camera.